s'mores chocolate chip cookies

About These S’mores Chocolate Chip Cookies

This s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipe is the chocolate chip cookie version of a classic s’mores treat!

The chocolate chip cookies are filled with pools of melted chocolate and studded with graham crackers. A giant marshmallow placed on top of each cookie then melts into a glorious ooey, gooey puddle.

The best part? These beauties come together in just 15 minutes! They are currently one of my favorite cookie recipes on Hummingbird High.

@hummingbirdhigh apparently it’s #nationalsmoresday whatever that means #baking #chocolatechipcookies #bakingtiktok ♬ Chill Vibes – Tollan Kim

Why You Should Make The Recipe

The cookies are an homage to a classic, summertime, campfire treat.

According to Wikipedia, the first recipe for s’mores was found in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts of 1927. The original recipe was simple and lists s’mores as we know it today:

Place a square of milk chocolate on a graham cracker. Toast a marshmallow and put on top of the chocolate, then a second graham cracker on top of the toasted marshmallow and squeeze and you will want “s’more”.

Pretty cute, right?

Since then, s’mores have taken on different shapes and sizes. Just googling around, there are a TON of recipes for different s’mores desserts. And on this blog, I have a recipe for s’mores cupcakes, no bake s’mores pie, and now, these chocolate chip cookies!

The recipe is easy.

Before developing my own recipe, I researched popular s’mores chocolate chip cookies on Google. All of them looked plenty tasty! However, many recipes instructed bakers through more involved steps. Like processing graham crackers into crumbs, cutting marshmallows in half, melting chocolate, and making chocolate ganache.

However, a big part of the appeal of s’mores is their ease. In theory, any one can make a tasty, delicious treat with just three ingredients and a minimal cooking recipe like a campfire. As a result, I wanted my recipe to reflect this ease and convenience.

So unlike other s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipes, my recipe comes together fairly easily. All you need to do is haphazardly crush some graham crackers into pieces and place a marshmallow on top of each cookie! That’s it.

These s’mores chocolate chip cookies come together quickly.

Because this recipe does not have any more involved steps, it comes together fairly quickly.

It takes about 5 minutes to brown the butter, another 5 minutes to make the cookie dough, and a final 5 to shape it into cookies. Each sheet pan needs 10 minutes to bake in the oven.

If you’re pressed for time, you can also skip the browning of the butter and use melted butter instead! Be sure to check out the ingredients section below for more information.

s'mores chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients and Substitutions

Now that I’ve convinced you to make this s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipe, here’s your shopping list for the recipe:

S’mores Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Shopping List

And let’s talk about some of its key ingredients:

Ingredient Sources and Substitutions

  • Unsalted Butter. If you don’t want to deal with browning the butter, you can go ahead and use melted butter in its place.

  • All-Purpose Flour. Check out my troubleshooting guide on How To Fix Puffy Cookies (And Other Cookie Baking Fails)!

  • Kosher Salt. Kosher salt is the best salt for baking recipes. But you can replace the kosher salt in the recipe with table salt. Just use half the amount listed in the recipe when you do!

  • Brown Sugar. I prefer the flavor of dark brown sugar because it contains more molasses (making it more flavorful). In a pinch, either light or dark brown sugar will do though!

  • Chocolate. Check out my post on The Best Chocolate For Chocolate Chip Cookies, which discusses why you should use dark chocolate with cacao percentages, chopped chocolate from baking bars and/or fèves, and more when making chocolate chip cookies!

  • Graham Crackers. These days, graham crackers come in all sorts of different flavors: honey, vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon. You can use whichever flavor you prefer and your cookies will be plenty tasty. But I personally like sticking with the honey variety for a classic s’mores flavor.

  • Marshmallows. You can get away with using the classic Kraft Jet-Puffed kind you know and love from your childhood. Just be sure to get the large kind—although smaller or mini marshmallows will work in a pinch, to get the EXACT look of my cookies, you need a big marshmallow to melt into a huge, gooey, glorious puddle.

    If you want a torched look, use a chef’s torch to gently and quickly lightly brown the tops of the marshmallows you’re planning on using. Don’t have a chef’s torch? No problem—toasting them on the stovetop like you would over a campfire works just as well!

No, please don’t. Although s’mores are typically made with Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars, do NOT use them in these cookies. I tried. It didn’t work. Hershey’s chocolate bars contain too many additives to melt properly in the oven. You want to shell out for the “good” chocolate here, whether it’s Valrhona feves I recommended above or your favorite expensive pretentious dark chocolate bar, chopped up by hand. Good chocolate will melt into puddles throughout the cookie, emulating the way chocolate melts in a classic s’more. 

Can I use mini marshmallows for these s’mores chocolate chip cookies instead?

In theory, yes, but I don’t recommend it. If you use mini marshmallows, your s’mores chocolate chip cookies will still be plenty tasty. However, they will look nothing like mine. Their texture also won’t be the same. Larger marshmallows—the kind you use for s’mores at campfires—are key to this recipe. At the end of the day, mini marshmallows just don’t melt and spread in the same way.

How To Make S’mores Chocolate Chip Cookies From Scratch

Here are the basic steps to make this s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipe:

First, brown the butter.

  1. Brown the butter. (Work Time: 5 minutes)
    Depending on how high the heat is and how cold your butter was to begin with, browning butter can take anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes. I like to brown the butter first to give it time to cool slightly while I prep the rest of the ingredients for the cookies. This also helps prevent you from accidentally scrambling the eggs in the dough (which can happen if you add butter that’s too hot or warm to the dough). 

Next, make the cookies.

  1. Prep your ingredients. (Prep Time: <5 minutes)
    Thankfully, prep for this recipe is fairly easy. Simply measure out all the ingredients, and chop the chocolate if needed.

  2. Make the cookie dough. (Work Time: 5 minutes)
    The cookie dough comes together really, really quickly. First, whisk together the dry ingredients. Then, beat together the brown butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla. Stir in the dry ingredients, then the chocolate and graham cracker pieces. That’s it!

  3. Next, scoop the cookie dough into cookie dough balls and top with marshmallow. (Work Time: 5 minutes)
    The fastest and easiest way to portion cookie dough is with a cookie dough scoop. Most cookie recipes work best with either a 3-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop (my personal fave for cookie recipes!) or a 4-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop. Use the scoop to portion the dough into cookie dough balls. Place the cookie dough balls at least 3 inches apart on a lined sheet pan as you go. You may need to use more than one sheet pan. Then, place a marshmallow on top of each cookie dough ball.

  4. Finally, bake the cookies. (Bake Time: 10 minutes per pan)
    Bake for 10 minutes, or until the edges have set but the centers are still gooey. It is better to underbake the cookies by pulling them out earlier rather than later—they’ll continue to cook on their sheet pans, but leave you gooey, fudgy centers. 
s'mores chocolate chip cookies

Recipe Troubleshooting and FAQ

Do I need to use a stand mixer to make these s’mores chocolate chip cookies?

Honestly, you can get away with NOT using a mixer for this recipe. In my Instagram Story tutorial for this recipe, I made the cookie dough by hand with two regular bowls. In one bowl, I mixed the dry ingredients like flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then, in the second bowl, I mixed the butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla by hand, before mixing in the dry ingredients.

You can see me demo this method on my Instagram profile. On my Instagram profile, there are circles of food underneath my bio. Click on one of the circles to view a step-by-step video tutorial of me making the recipe. You may need to scroll left or right to find the tutorial for this s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Help! My cookie dough is SUPER greasy, and the dough feels too loose to scoop. What did I do wrong?

Don’t panic! We can fix this pretty easily. If your dough feels greasy and loose, it’s likely that you used the butter while it was still too hot. To fix the issue, simply place the entire bowl of cookie dough in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. Doing so will help the dough firm up. After 10 minutes, check the dough. If it still feels too loose, give it another 5 to 10 minutes in the fridge. However, I don’t recommend chilling it for longer—doing so will harden the cookie dough too much and make it really hard to scoop!

Help! My s’mores chocolate chip cookies spread way too much. They look much thinner and more brittle than yours. What did I do wrong?

Ah. First things first, scroll up and read the preceding question and come back. Now—did you bake the cookies when the dough felt super greasy and loose? If so, that means that the butter was still too hot from being melted. Butter that’s too hot causes the cookies to spread out way too much in the oven, creating thin and brittle cookies.

Alternatively, if you chilled the cookie dough and your cookies still came out too thin and brittle, you may have an ingredients issue. It’s likely that you used way too much sugar by accidentally packing in too much in the measuring cup. See the next question below for more info on how to properly use measuring cups!

Help! My cookies came out too puffy. They didn’t sink after baking and don’t look flat like yours. What did I do wrong?

Check out my troubleshooting guide on How To Fix Puffy Cookies (And Other Cookie Baking Fails)! THis will help you figure out the issue. Additionally, when testing this recipe, I found that leaving larger, 1 to 2 inch pieces of graham crackers sometimes made the cookies too puffy and prohibited them from falling flat. It’s still plenty tasty. But if the puffy look bothers you, crush your graham crackers up into smaller pieces!

Can you freeze s’mores chocolate chip cookies?

Yes! You can freeze the unbaked s’mores chocolate chip cookies.

To freeze these s’mores chocolate chip cookies, follow the recipe instructions to make the cookie dough and scoop them out into cookie dough balls. Place the cookie dough balls in a small sheet pan. Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 1 hour, or until the cookie dough balls are frozen solid. Transfer the cookie dough balls to a zip-top bag and freeze for up to 3 months.

When ready to bake, follow the recipe’s instructions to arrange the cookie dough balls on sheet pans. Place a marshmallow on top of each cookie dough ball. Then, preheat the oven as instructed in the recipe. There’s no need to thaw the cookie dough beforehand. HOWEVER, it’s important to place the chilled cookie dough balls on lined sheet pans, THEN preheat the oven. It usually takes 10 to 15 minutes to preheat an oven. During this time, the cookie dough balls will thaw slightly and start to come to room temperature—this is a good thing! If you bake them straight from the fridge while they’re still cold, the cookies tend to stay puffy and don’t sink as much. However, this slight thawing period during the oven preheating process ensures that the cookies will fall flat when baked.

Best Recipe Tips

Ingredient Tip

  • In the recipe below, I instruct you to use graham crackers that are hand-broken into ½- to 1-inch pieces. The trick is to not think about it too much and break the graham crackers by hand into fairly large, random, and uneven pieces. Throw it all into the mixer all at once—the beater will crush some of the graham crackers into fine crumbs, while keeping other pieces in bigger shards, giving each bite of cookie lots of different graham cracker textures with every bite.

Technique Tips

  • When placing the marshmallow on top of each cookie dough ball, lightly place each one on top of its ball; it doesn’t really stick since the cookie dough is too greasy. You can quickly pat the top of each dough ball too to make a plateau on which to rest the marshmallow on.

  • Some of the marshmallows are going to fall off the cookies as they sink and expand in the oven. It’s fine if they end up a little lopsided—it’s what makes the cookies pretty! But it’s DEFINITELY a problem if they fall off completely. Why? If they fall off, they’ll melt into a puddle on the pan, leaving you with a sticky mess to clean. And then some of your cookies won’t have any marshmallows on them, defeating the whole point of this s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipe!

    To prevent these issues, I recommend peeking in the oven about 2 to 3 minutes into the baking time to see if any marshmallows have fallen off. If they have, don’t worry about it too much! Quickly open the oven door, reach in there, and re-position the marshmallow back onto its cookie dough ball. At this point, the marshmallow will still solid enough to handle. Just don’t squish too hard—it should already be getting a little melty! Peek into the oven again 6 minutes into the baking time and make any adjustments as necessary.

Baking Tip

  • I like to bake the cookies one pan at a time. I find that doing so makes the best cookies, ensuring that none of them have overly burnt bottoms or raw centers. However, to save time, you can bake two sheet pans at a time. Position a rack in the upper-third position of the oven, and a second one in the lower-third position of the oven. Bake a pan on each rack, swapping their positions half way through the Bake Time.

Serving Tip

  • Although these cookies are best when served warm and gooey (about 10 to 15 minutes after pulling them from the oven) for the authentic s’mores experience, getting them off the pan can be a bit of a pain. Why? The marshmallow is still sticky and melty—it will cling on to the pan with all its might. If you want your cookies to remain in tact, wait until they’ve cooled completely to room temperature. Then, use a still metal spatula and run it underneath the bottom of each cookie to unstick any melted marshmallow. 

Video Tutorial

Use the video player below to watch my Instagram Story tutorial on how to make this s’mores chocolate chip cookies recipe! The arrows to the left and right of the frame allow you to skip through the different recipe steps. You can also hit the “pause” or “enlarge” buttons on the upper right hand side of the frame to pause or enlarge the frames accordingly.


Alternatively, head to my Instagram profile to watch these Stories on mobile! The circles underneath my bio indicate saved Instagram Story highlights depicting various recipes. Clicking on one of the circles will play the videos you see above. You may need to scroll right to find this s’mores chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Print

Get the Recipe: S’mores Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 15 minutes
Bake Time: 10 minutes
Servings: 18 cookies
Author: Michelle Lopez
This s'mores chocolate chip cookie recipe is the cookie version of a classic s'mores treat! Think: cookies full of pools of melted chocolate, crunchy graham cracker crumbs, and gooey melted marshmallows.
(4.91 stars) 22 reviews
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Ingredients

For the S'mores Chocolate Chip Cookies:

  • ½ cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 1⅔ cup (7.5 ounces or 213 grams) all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • ¾ cup tightly packed (5.65 ounces or 160 grams) dark OR light brown sugar
  • ¼ cup (1.75 ounces or 50 grams) granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 6 ounces (170 grams) dark chocolate (between 60% to 70% cocoa), from whole Valrhona fèves or a high quality chocolate bar, chopped into ½ to 1-inch pieces
  • 2 ounces (57 grams) graham crackers (from around 4 sheets), hand broken into ½- to 1-inch pieces
  • 18 large marshmallows, preferably Smashmallow Toasted Vanilla marshmallows

Instructions
 

For the S'mores Chocolate Chip Cookies:

  • First, brown the butter. In a light-colored saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat, swirling the pan occasionally, until it starts to foam. Use a heatproof rubber spatula to scrape the bottom and sides of the pan occasionally to prevent the milk solids in the butter from burning. Cook for 5 minutes, or until the butter smells nutty and is amber with dark flecks at the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat and immediately pour the brown butter into a liquid measuring cup. Set it on a wire rack to cool while you prep the other ingredients.
  • Prep your oven and pans. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two half sheet pans with parchment paper.
  • Mix the dry ingredients, then mix the sugars. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugars.
  • Mix the butter and sugar, then add the egg, vanilla, dry ingredients, and chocolate. Pour the butter over the sugar in the mixer bowl and beat on low until just combined. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until just combined. Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl.
    With the mixer on low, gradually add the dry ingredients and beat until just combined. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl once more, and beat on low for an additional 30 seconds. Increase the mixer to medium-low, add the chocolate and graham crackers all at once, and beat until both is evenly distributed throughout, about 1 minute.
  • Assemble the cookies. Use a 3-tablespoon cookie dough scoop to portion the cookie dough into balls, placing them at least 3 inches apart on the prepared sheet pans. Lightly place a marshmallow directly on top of the center of each cookie dough ball.
  • Bake the cookies. Bake one pan at a time for 10 minutes, or until the edges have set but the centers are still gooey. The cookies will look puffed when you pull them out of the oven, but will fall and crack into the perfect cookies as they cool. Cool the cookies on the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes, or until the edges and bottoms of the cookies have set and feel firm to the touch. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough.
  • Serve and store. Before serving, use a stiff metal spatula and run it underneath the bottom of each cookie to unstick any melted marshmallow. Serve warm or at room temperature. The cookies can be stored in an airtight container or zip-top bag at room temperature for up to 3 days.
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